Amazon had said it expects to hire over 70,000 seasonal employees across the US, along with more than 15,000 in the UK, to cope with the Christmas rush.

In the United Kingdom, the warehousing etailer will be taking on 2.5 times more staffers than the number of its 6,000-strong permanent workforce, while the United States will see its Amazon employees nearly double from around 88,000.

Amazon claims that the temporary positions on the warehouse packing lines often turn into full-time jobs, saying that 7,000 temps had so far been promoted to permanent positions this year in the States, while another 1,000 graduated in Britain.

Any new workers can expect to really earn their pay in what Amazon likes to call its "fulfilment centres".

"On our busiest shopping day last Christmas, customers ordered a total of 3.5 million items during one 24-hour period at a rate of 44 items a second," said Catherine McDermott, director of ops at Amazon UK. ®